To trust, or not to trust - that is the question.....

John E. Smith starts out with this Samuel Johnson quote:
“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”
and then asks, "You buy this?"

My answer, "Yep."  The few people I know who are incapable of trusting are the unhappiest people I know.  It is like a disease that destroys all the good and all the relationships in their lives.  On the flip side of that, our business model has long been based on partnerships.  Successful partnerships require trust between the partners.  As we have said more than a few times, "a handshake is better than a contract;  you can break a contract, but you can't break a handshake."  Lest you think we are naive, we don't enter into partnerships with just anybody.  As one of my favorite presidents said, "Trust, but verify."  Trusting has worked for us, not all the time, but the vast majority of the time, and we're pretty happy guys.